


Grace Too

by schmevil



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode Tag, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-13
Updated: 2009-11-13
Packaged: 2017-10-02 14:46:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/schmevil/pseuds/schmevil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chastity doesn't kick Castiel out, and Dean doesn't drive away.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Grace Too

**Author's Note:**

> Outlawpoet betaed. Kijikun, prodded.

He tells her that it's not her fault.

She falls out of his lap, landing awkwardly, and obviously painfully, on the floor. The pain doesn't stop her from scrambling to her feet, or from shrieking out a stream of profanity that Castiel can barely decipher.

For a long second he's stunned by her reaction, but even more so by her pain, at how it wells up inside of her, at mention of her father. He'd seen the wound, but not that it was still bleeding, not so much. She hides it well, he thinks. That decides it for him - he takes hold of her forearms, and holds her still. Her hands are curled into claws, and still seek him, impossibly. She is so angry. So scared. Of him? He almost lets her go, but there's a memory of her father, beautiful collage of a day, all the pain carefully extracted.

"Chastity."

"Let me go!"

"It's not your fault," he says again. This time more firmly, willing her to find his eyes. She looks down, away; evasive even in his iron grip. He does as Dean did, follows her, urges her gaze to meet his. Finally she looks up. Her eyes are wet. "It was not your fault." He says it a third time. Benediction. Something changes in her with that - something like belief. Her body goes slack, so he eases her down to bed, and sits beside her. She folds her hands in her lap. It's a simple gesture, but he's struck by the elegance of it; her long fingers; fine, delicate wrists.

"Who are you?" she asks in a small voice.

"A friend." He doesn't know how else to answer that - he has, he thinks, scared her enough. He must mend this, somehow.

She laughs, a ragged thing that turns into a sob.

Castiel has little experience with human sorrow. He has stood witness to the birth of kings, and has guided them in the Lord's will. He has watched humanity for eons, but still knows so little of them. He was made to fight, and to obey. None of his skills serve him here.

This is nothing to do with his mission. Not his old one (obey), or his new one (finding his absent father). There is a larger picture, and one small broken girl has nothing to do with it - but he has done this, reopened wounds that had scabbed over, and his presence does nothing but make it bleed the worse. He has done this.

He lays a hand on her shoulder. She doesn't stop crying, but leans into it, and then further still, until she's pressed into his side, wetting the lapels of Jimmy Novak's trench coat. It's over quickly - she cries for only a handful of minutes, before she is sitting up and wiping her eyes clean, but for Castiel it is an age. Her body next to his, and her soul ripped open for him to see - by him - and he wants so dearly to help. He reaches out, holds her with this body's hands and with his true ones, and then he can't _not_ see her.

He sees the scattered memories she riffles through, one after the next. Her father's hands. Her mother's perfume. One perfect day at a tiny, public beach. She doesn't know it's name. Castiel could probably tell her - he stops himself from looking for it. Other memories too: a first kiss, and another one far less sweet. And more, until he thinks he might see the whole of her, and worries what she sees.

He is descending, into her, around her - it is something wholly new and undefinable because of it. Can she see? Can she see _him_? He gentles his hold on her, but takes everything her mind gives up, and passes it back to her, quieted.

"I believe you," she says after wiping her eyes. Something has passed between them. Something he cannot name.

Chastity lies down. For a horrifying moment he thinks he's made things worse, that he has burned out some part of her, with his attempt to help. Then she smiles. It's a simple smile. Lovely and clean. He sees the truth of it; how it goes to the depths of her soul.

"I should go," he says.

"No," she says, and grabs at his wrist when he makes to leave. He's a thousand thousand times stronger than her, but there is something powerful in her touch. He settles back down on the bed.

"Stay and talk awhile?" she asks shyly. He does, and is amazed by that.

Castiel has spoken with thousands of humans, but he hadn't had a conversation with one, until Dean. Now he passes long moments of quiet intimacy with this woman, who he has just met. She laughs at his awkwardness, as though it's charming, and doesn't flinch at the alienness of him. When she tugs at him to lie beside her, so that she can whisper in his ear, he lets her. When she whispers, "I want to give you something," he lets her.

Later, he gives Chastity his phone number. He can't imagine it - will she call to tell him about her day as human friends do? But he feels somehow that it is needful. Something has passed between them, he thinks again. He must return to the phone kiosk, to purchase additional speaking time.

She sees him to the door, and stops him, with a hand at his wrist. He turns back to her. Chastity is smiling again. "I'm glad I met you, Castiel."

"As am I," he says.

 

Dean is waiting for him in the bar. He stands when Castiel approaches, a broad smile on his face. Chastity helped him to fix his clothing, but he has been gone for some time.

"You sly dog."

"What about my appearance is dog like?"

"Everything," Dean says with a grin. Castiel has no response for this, so he stares, trying to find the answer in Dean's face. Dean just claps a hand on his shoulder and leads him out to the car.

Dean settles against the trunk of the Impala, motioning for Castiel to do the same. He leans against the car, emulating Dean's posture. "So." Dean shoves an elbow into his ribs. "Got your cherry popped." Castiel frowns. "Yeah, yeah, no cherries in sight. Confused angel is confused." Dean waves a hand, a sweeping gesture that seems to imply that he has explained everything. Castiel tilts his head, and frowns again. In many ways, Dean is the hardest to understand of all of his charges. In other ways he is the easiest.

He finds part of the answer in a previous conversation, one that had been clearly awkward for Dean.

("Cherry is a metaphor." Thank god Sammy isn't here for this. "It means-- pure."

"Virginal," Castiel offers.

"Exactly," Dean says enthusiastically. Glad that the angel has filled in the gaps for himself.

"I see," Castiel says, looking doubtful about that.)

And the rest of it in another that he caught only the end of, having come in on Sam and Dean without warning.

("I'd like to pop her-" Dean drops the magazine to the floor, then tries to subtly tuck it under the bed with the heel of his boot. He's probably not being subtle, but you try being stealthy when an angel bamfs into your hotel room while you're perving on some barely legal, girl-on-girl action.

Cas doesn't question it. He doesn't so much as look at Dean funny, or give him a head-tilt of what the fuck. He just launches into mission talk. For once, Dean is grateful that the angel has no clue when it comes to small talk. Or talk of any kind, really. Castiel's masterly ability to ignore the small things in favour of the mission at hand would be admirable, if it weren't also incredibly annoying. Sometimes. Times that don't involve Dean's porn stash.)

"I didn't get my cherry popped, Dean."

Dean's eyes go wide at that. Then they narrow. His face seems trapped between expressions, as torn as the rest of him - he laughs, a short peal of hilarity that's cut off quickly. "So what the hell were you doing in there all that time? Braiding each other's hair?"

Castiel looks away from him then, to the wall of the brothel. He can't _see_ through the wall to Chastity's room, but he can sense her nonetheless. She has not gone out to the lounge to seek another client. Instead she sits in the room that serves as a kind of office - her place of business. So while the idiom might not be correct, the sentiment is, he thinks. He feels something. For her. Is it affection?

He turns to Dean, who's watching him, still confused, but with half a smile. The distance between their bodies can be measured only in millimeters, or on scales even smaller. Dean's half smile, the curve of his spine, as he ducks his head and laughs at him quietly - all of this is maddeningly familiar, and comfortable. Castiel realizes, of a sudden, that he has memorized turns of phrase that he thinks of as purely Dean's. And that while he is no closer to understanding Dean, he wants to - he wants to know him. This, he thinks is affection.

"Something happened," Dean says then, warily. "Don't tell me you got up to some kind of freaky angel sex with that woman..." Castiel has trouble reading Dean, but that a kind of morbid curiosity is first in his mind, is clear. "What _did_ you do with her?"

"We... spoke."

"That's all? Seriously?" Castiel looks away again - not to avoid Dean, but simply because he cannot seem to put it into words. Dean drops a hand to his knee. No one has ever touched his knees, Castiel thinks. The thought grows large inside him - _no one has ever touched_ \- and he can't understand why. "Cas?"

He looks up to find Dean's face close to his own - when had he moved? Castiel can't say, but now it would take no effort to close that distance. "We kissed."

She had kissed him, first business like, and then later, with infinite care and grace. Her long, delicate fingers cradling his face, and pulling him close to her. "Let me show you," she had said. A gift, a human thing - Castiel had a moment of panic then, for angels did not give of themselves except in duty; did not share comfort or joy, only service and their father, and always their love for him. And this-- this touch, flesh to flesh, was all body and yet not, in ways he could not fathom. Things tripped up, flared, in his borrowed flesh, a tangle of sensations that had him gasping for breath, for the first time. Castiel had no need of breath, but this mortal shell did, craved it as it did the tips of her fingers--

"Dean," he whispers.

Dean's eyes are wide, his lips parted. His hand still rests on Castiel's knee, his fingers now brushing the inside of his thigh. His heart speeds, familiar as so much of Dean is, but strange too - there is no danger here. No danger here, he thinks, and his heart - _his_ heart now, for he is alone in his body - speeds too. Between the beats of Dean's heart, Castiel moves, and finds Dean moving too. Castiel stands, but only so he can get closer to Dean, until he finds himself breathing Dean's exhalations, taking them into himself.

"You kissed her?" Dean asks, his voice less than a whisper.

"She touched her fingers to mine, and her lips to mine," he says into Dean's ear. Dean's breath hitches, and he shudders - Castiel feels it, though they aren't touching, save for Dean's hand at his waist. Dean's other hand comes up between them, fingers fluttering over Castiel's shirt. Then he's pushed back, moved only because of the force of Dean's emotion and the surprise of it. He falls back half a step, but Dean's hand, pressed hot against his waist, keeps him from moving further away. His other hand is raised between them, palm to Castiel, fingers extended.

This now, is one of those moments where the gulf between them stretches impossibly wide. Dean's body says yes and no at once, to questions Castiel hasn't asked. Questions he can't ask, because he doesn't know the how of it, or the why of it, even as his body cries yes, yes it does - but Castiel is not _human_. He wants only to know Dean, to see him, in all the ways that he can.

And then, without effort, it is happening again. It would take more to cease his falling than to speed it - Castiel knows because he tries fleetingly, before he realizes with a shock that he has no desire to stop. No will to pull away from Dean. Dean's heartbeat, his breathing, loud in Castiel's ears, driving his own body faster and faster. The shape of his mouth, the spray of freckles across his nose, the sound of his name - the name Dean gave him - coming from his lips. Affection, he remembers, and then it's so easy.

"Dean," he says, and then again. "Dean."

Dean's arms come up around him. A hand at the small of his back brings them together. Their lips meet and open to each other. The first brush of Dean's tongue across the inside of his lip sends a jolt through his body - his _body_. Castiel is present, inhabiting the furthest limits of this mortal flesh, even as his true self soars, laps at Dean's soul, wanting more than anything to be seen. He sees through all his senses, two selves, two bodies, human and angel, but somehow one. There is no panic, no uncertainty, only joy - and it is all so easy, as Dean opens to him.

"Cas," he hears. "Cas, Cas." Benediction.

Sammy's first step. His father isn't there, so Dean takes pictures with a battered, salvage yard Poloroid. His father's smile and the feel of his arms around Dean when he shoots his first bulls eye. Cassie's beautiful silhouette - he's half in love before he even meets her. So many kisses. And other things, belonging to unquiet nights. The smell of blood. His father lying dead, and then his brother. Sammy's lifeless body. So many kinds of pain. The whole of Dean opens up to him, and Castiel takes it, takes all of it into himself, and finds himself giving back.

Dean, who he raised from hell and remade out of his own being - what do you see?

The birth of stars and the end of them. Moons rising over Jupiter. The long slow growth of the deep forests of the Earth; the rise and fall of trees, felled by lightning and age. The trillion trillion cells that make up the creature called Dean Winchester; the sublime way they fit together to make a whole. His brothers, bright and terrible.

Dean, he says, with the voice that Dean should not be able to hear, but somehow does. Dean, what do you see?

The answer is on his lips; in the way that he pulls Castiel impossibly closer; in how his hands find their way under his shirt, and his nails scrape over the skin of his back. In the whole of him, which is fearlessly open to Castiel; in his wide open eyes that see Castiel with senses his body does not possess. And this-- Dean, is grace too, as surely as is the core of Castiel's being.

When he has receded from Dean, when Castiel is firmly in his vessel, he watches him closely, running his hands over Dean's body, searching for injury, though there is nothing they can find that his true eyes can't find better. Dean takes long, deep breaths; bringing his body to heel. It does not shake, though his muscles are taxed and weary, as if he had run for hours, and not spent the last five minutes leaning against his car, holding Castiel close.

"Are you ok?" Dean asks.

Cas finds his mouth dry, wets his lips, and then says, "I was going to ask you the same thing."

Dean grins, cocky and utterly beautiful. Castiel finds all of his Father's creations lovely, but never like this. "Dean, I-" The flow of words stops, not because he is uncertain, but because his voice breaks. He had not understood the expression until now, with the immediacy of his _affection_, of Dean, welling up in him.

"Hey." Dean runs his hands over Castiel's shoulders - gentling him. Comforting him. Castiel had never thought to be comforted by a human.

"Was that," Dean asks, almost shyly. "Was that what you did with the girl?"

"Chastity?" Castiel laughs. It's still new to him, laughing. Still strange. "No. This was... unique."

"So we invented a new way to knock boots?" Castiel blinks at him. "To do it, Cas."

"Ah. You could... see it that way."

"I know I'm awesome, but damn."

"Dean, this was unique. I was not joking about that. No angel has ever-"

"Cas, no. I get it. I do." Dean traces the backs of his fingers, across the skin of Castiel's cheek, then settles his palm against his neck. His grip is firm - he would pull Castiel to him again. He follows Dean's lead, and tips his face up. Dean presses a soft and fleeting kiss onto his mouth.

"I can't believe I'm saying this, but it's late, and we have a big day ahead of us tomorrow."

"Yes," Castiel agrees. "You should rest."

Dean lets him go, then walks around to the car door. Once he's turned on the headlights, and the Impala's engine is rumbling, he rolls down the windows and calls out to Castiel. "Get in. Unless you've, you know, got something better to do on what might be your last night on Earth. What's left of it anyway."

Castiel walks to the passenger door and opens it, rather than blinking himself into the seat beside Dean. "There is nowhere else I would be."

"Good," Dean says, and turns to the road ahead of them, smiling.


End file.
